dylanlynch23

[dylanlynch23]

Blunts, Baptist Boot Camp, and a Boombox Full of Weed

True Story of a 90s Teen Who Got Caught, Called Out, and Carted off

🚨 Note: This story was written in 2016—before #MeToo, before I fully grasped how messed up some of this stuff really was. I always knew it was “wrong,” but it didn’t hit me like that back then. This isn’t a victim story. It’s a true one. And if you were a teenage girl in the 90s, you probably get it. You just… survived it. Welcome to the week I got sent to Baptist military boarding school at 15.

📆 January 10, 1994 – Monday: Slater Meets the Parents

I was three months from turning 16 when I got busted hanging out with a 21-year-old. If you’re picturing Wooderson from Dazed and Confused, but he was more like the super-stoner Slater.

That Monday, Slater came over while my parents were home. I lied and said he was 18. We hung out in the living room. He left at a reasonable hour.

My dad, a night-shift sergeant at the county jail, was in the kitchen reading Anne Rice and prepping South Park VHS marathons for his jail staff—before “binge-watching” was even a word.

📆 January 11 – Tuesday: Jailhouse Coincidence

Dad clocked in at 7 p.m., like always. He covered the booking desk for 15 minutes so a coworker could go smoke. That was all it took.

Slater got brought in during that exact window for a $92 traffic ticket from four years earlier.

He panicked:

“Is Officer Lynch working?”

“Hey, Lynch! One of your friends is here!” an officer shouted down the hall, delighted.

My dad had to book him. That’s when he saw Slater’s real age—and his record.

📆 January 12 – Wednesday: Shit Hits the Fan

Usually, my dad got home in time to drive me to school. He’d pull up slow, and I’d hop in. Not that day.

He hauled ass up the driveway, stormed up to the door like the damn Terminator. I panicked and dropped into the recliner like I’d been sitting there the whole time. Totally casual.

He bursts in, no warm-up:

“You wanna tell me anything about Slater?!”

“Umm… do you wanna tell me anything about Slater?” I answered, buying time.

He told me. Loudly. All the way to school.

I was a wreck. My dance teacher gave me a hall pass to skip homeroom and first period after seeing me crying. I didn’t even have to ask. Everyone knew by lunch.

📆 That Afternoon: The Guillotine Walk

Molly dropped me off. Dad was welding in his shop.

“Hey, Dylan! Come’re!”

As I walked over, I thought: This must be what people felt like walking to the guillotine. Tragic. So young…

“Whattaya thinka boarding school?” he asked.

I cackled. Wicked Witch-style.

“You think my mother is going to send her only baby to boarding school?! You’re fucking crazy…”

I was full 15-year-old smartass. You betta check ya’self, before ya wreck ya’self, sir.

“Dylan, ya mama’s the one who gave me the number.” Said in full Beaumont twang, with that serious cop face.

I stopped laughing.

Apparently, they’d already called the school. Already made plans. Spent their life savings to “reform” me.

“If it’s an all-girls school, I’ll run away. You’ll never find me.”

Empty threat. They called. The girl-to-guy ratio? One to three.

“Fine. Whatever.” I “compromised.”

Truth is, I used to ask to go to boarding school during fights. I just never thought they’d call my bluff.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

📆 January 12 (Night): The Slater Debrief

I was getting ready for my friend Parker to come get me. My parents were going on about how I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere. I calmly asked them:

“What’re you gonna do? Ground me? Send me to boarding school?”

Parker picked me up. On the way to Slater’s sketchy-ass apartment, she rear-ended someone and had her first wreck. On brand for this day. We get there, and she stopped the car:

“This is where I’m dropping you off, Dylan?!”

“Yeah it’s fine, see ya at 9, love youuuu!!!”

We smoked out. I told him about boarding school. Then I let this slip:

“Dude! I just realized—I’m going to turn 16 in fucking boarding school!”

Record scratch.

“Wait… you told me you already were 16.”

Roommate’s girlfriend? Laughing her ass off.

I hit the bong, held it, and exhaled:

“Uhhh… no. I said I was about to be 16. In March.”

Back then, gaslighting was just called self preservation.

It worked. I think.

Last I heard, Slater was still roaming our hometown with those some coke-bottle glasses. Homeless.

📆 January 13 – Thursday: The Goodbye Tour Begins

Showed up to school, announced:

“This is my last day. I have an interview tomorrow at some Baptist military boarding school. I’ll probably move in Sunday.”

My dance teacher let the class sit in a circle and talk all period—for the first and only time in 3.5 years. She also wrote me letters once I was gone. She was the good kind of teacher—the kind that leaves a dent.

She once told me:

“Dylan, you don’t have to dress weird to be weird. People know you’re weird.”

I took it as a compliment. That was the day I decided to just be myself.

📆 January 14 – Friday: Interview Day

Three-hour drive. I wore my dark green bell-sleeve sweater dress, with an empire waist, which also belled out to mid-thigh, matching forest green heavy eyeliner, and my black/burgundy Steve Madden platforms.

I looked dope.

It backfired.

They “wanted to help me even more” and admitted me on the spot.

📆 January 14 (Night): Going-Away Plotting

I stayed “home.” Friends came over. We hung out in the yard.

Dad opened the door and said:

“I’m ain’t gonna have y’all smokin’ drugs in my yard!”

We weren’t. Yet.

So I left. That’s when we planned my going-away party at Trey’s.

Let there be blunts… and 40s.

📆 January 15 – Saturday: Party Time

Trey’s house was packed—easily 50-75 people. I bought a half ounce from Tino “for my travels.” Probably got tanked on Boone’s, Mad Dog, or Olde English 40s. Definitely lots of blunts.

Still made curfew. I always made curfew. My mom worried about everything.

📆 January 16 – Sunday: Move-In Day

It was my dad’s 47th birthday. (I turn 47 this Friday. 😳)

We moved my stuff into the dorm. My parents asked if I wanted them to stay.

I looked at my dad and said:

“Happy birthday.”

And slammed the door in their faces.

Yeah, it was cold. That was the point.

⚠️ Life at Muhfuggin’ Baptist Military Academy

I met Kelly that day—another new girl. She’d gotten wasted the night before and was already on restriction. Along with six other girls.

Restriction = military silence + shame circuit.

You ate only with other restricteds. You couldn’t speak. You had to initial a paper every 15 minutes to prove you were in the dorm. You wore your uniform 24/7 unless you were asleep.

Also, you had to run a mile a day for the first week—unless you had a doctor’s note. I always had a note. From at least 5th grade.

Music was my sanity. My boom box (which also held my smuggled weed in the battery compartment) blasted:

• In Utero – Nirvana

• Siamese Dream – Smashing Pumpkins

• Paul’s Boutique – Beastie Boys

• Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? – The Cranberries

Smoking? If anyone even smelled it on you, they’d literally smell your fingers.

Nothing existed to get the smell of nicotine off your fingers.

I started using an eyelash curler to hold my cigs. Seven years later, I visited—and they were still doing it.

Proud moment.

So yeah.

That’s how I ended up in a Baptist military boarding school in the middle of Texas. I might write about how I almost got kicked out that very Wednesday another time. For now, here’s my suite-mates and I at some point, with cloves hanging out of our mouths.

[dylanlynch23]

I Drove $1.8 Million in a Prius on a Random Thursday

Before "Do It for the Plot" Was Even a Thing

I was a courier for almost 10 years, which basically means I would take extremely random things from point A to point B, in my Prius. Sometimes I’d stay in Houston, sometimes I’d pick up in Houston and drive hours away to drop something off. I was “on call” whenever I wanted to be—if a job came up, dispatch would call and see who wanted it. The longer the run, the better the money, but if you turned down too many local jobs, you’d get bumped down the call list for the better ones. Fair enough. They had to deal with the customers, I mainly just dealt with the dispatchers.

I preferred working nights—fewer people on the road, fewer people to deal with—but most of our jobs came in during the day, so it was never not random. One day, I’d get a 2 a.m. call asking if I wanted to drive to Memphis. Another day, a 9 a.m. call asking if I wanted to go to Wichita. I never knew what I’d be doing the next week, day, or hour. I loved that.

My dispatcher, Joe, was basically my best friend. He made the job fun. One morning, I was almost done with my local runs when he called me.

“Dude, do you wanna go to Beaumont?”

“Joe, nobody wants to go to Beaumont. How much is it worth to them?”

Obviously, I took the job. It was a 1.5-hour, 75-ish mile drive. I can’t remember how much I got paid—probably around $120—but then Joe said something that made me pay attention.

“Dude, I think someone fucked up.”

“What do you mean?” My first thought: Did Joe fuck up? Did someone call the wrong courier company? Am I about to transport something crazier than I’ve ever transported? My heart picked up speed.

For reference, here are just a few things I had transported before this:

· Some kind of helicopter part to Wichita.

· 25 pounds of human nerve tissue (more often than you’d think—we picked up all kinds of things no one wants to think about).

· An inflatable airplane slide for an airline. (They were almost never planned, so the best I could do was post “I just picked up an airplane slide, tucked all nice n’ neat in a way smaller box than. you’d expect… Who wants to party?!)

· Cadavers. (Many side stories there.)

· Eyeballs. (Eye banks are a thing. Now you know.)

· A live kidney for a transplant. Twice. (You don’t want the side story on that one.)

· A Suburban wrapped in NFL Network graphics, towing an oversized football, all the way to Denver. (That was literally my first job. Joe hooked the homie up.)

So when he said, “I think someone fucked up,” my curiosity was at full tilt boogie.

“The job is taking 100 pounds of platinum to a chemical plant in Beaumont. I think they were supposed to call for an armored car service or something… but they called us… So fuck it, ya want it?”

“Ha! Sure. Have you looked up how much 100 pounds of platinum is worth yet?” I was driving, so I couldn’t Google it.

Joe started typing. “How many ounces in a pound?”

“Sixteen.”

His immediate response was, “HOLY FUCK!”

“What?!”

“It’s over $1,000 per ounce.” His voice had gone up an octave.

“So how much is 100 pounds?”

A longer pause. Then, “Dude… that’s $1.7 million… $1,786,322, is what it came out to.”

Without missing a beat, I said, “That sounds like $1.8 million to me.” I started laughing. Because WHAT DO YOU MEAN…?

I drove straight to the airport to pick up. In cargo, a forklift guy loaded two nondescript, 50-pound barrels into the back of my Prius. I texted Joe to confirm the pickup, then called him as I pulled onto the freeway.

“The eagle has landed.”

Joe exhaled. “Man, what if this isn’t an accident? What if it’s some elaborate Ocean’s 11 shit?”

“…What the fuck?”

“I’m just saying—what if they ‘accidentally’ called us instead of an armored car, because instead of an armored truck transporting $1.8 million worth of platinum, it’s just some clueless chick with purple hair in a Prius?” He lowered his voice like someone might hear him. “What if you’re in a heist and don’t know your role yet?”

“BITCH, DON’T TELL ME THAT!!!” I was laughing, but also not laughing.

Joe had gotten in my head. What if this is a setup? What if I’m about to be ambushed? Well, I know I don’t wanna be in the car if/when that happens. At this point, I was starving anyway, so I exited 59 to find food (yes, by George Bush Intercontinental Airport, thank you for asking). I stopped at a taqueria in a nearly empty strip mall, sat by a window, and ate migas soaked in queso while watching my 2012 Prius-C, now worth almost $2 million, sit in the parking lot.

I ran through a mental list of people I knew who could make me disappear to Costa Rica. Unfortunately, they were all dead or in jail. Not saying I’d actually do it, but it was a fun thought.

Once I finished eating (and my secret moment of plotting international theft), I grabbed a Mexican Coke for the road and kept driving.

The chemical plant was deep in Beaumont, past miles of industrial wasteland. Gravel roads. Surveillance signs. A possible drone. It was all very top secret government conspiracy energy. I called the customer: “Hey, I’m here, but this place is huge, and I don’t want to end up somewhere I shouldn’t be.”

He told me where to meet him—at an intersection of two dirt roads, maybe 50 feet from a railroad track. When we got out of our cars, he signed the paperwork, then chuckled as I opened my hatchback.

“Did they tell you what this was?”

I laughed. “Yeah. If I had better friends, I’d be in Costa Rica right now.”

He laughed. I laughed. And then I watched my $1.8 million drive off into the sunset.

Just kidding. It was 2 p.m., and I was on the Texas/Louisiana state line. No way was I sticking around in that oppressive heat. Even when a breeze comes, it just feels like a Mastiff is breathing on you, which almost makes it worse. I had no interest in finding out firsthand whether weed mattered to a chemical company’s security search. That’s not the plot twist I wanted.

Instead, I drove to Port Arthur to see the replica of Janis Joplin’s painted Porsche. Because my cousin wasn’t at his alligator sanctuary.

My pics weren't great, but they're mine.

[dylanlynch23]

EVERYBODY BE COOL!!!

Sorry. Kinda nervous, felt like quoting Pulp Fiction.

But as long as you're here... I'm posting my first story tomorrow morning!!!😃 It's about the time someone screwed up at their job, which resulted in me driving $1.8 million of platinum to a chemical plant. In my Prius.

[dylanlynch23]

Becoming a writer is great because now you have a hobby that haunts you whenever you don’t have time to do it